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March 2019

Lent 17

Lent 17

(city life)

 

Then the mouse

Visits the cousin in the city

There is noise

Fantastic noise

From machines and gravelly

Human movement

Friction protesting air

There are scarves and neckties

Inside collar buttons

And closed sleeves

And shoes will never be the same

 

There is energy in mass

Sometimes it’s a push against

The lack of complementary understanding

 

There is metal

But there’s metal everywhere

There is plastic that has become

A universal challenge

 

All forms might matter

All substances invite

All cities are a marvel

And all this only on arrival

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Thomas Habr on Unsplash

Empire State Building, New York, United States

I was in the US for the first time, I have visited all the places and that includes Empire State Building, I’ve been waiting for the sunset 4 hours there, I was freezing but it was worth the shot. Hope you like it.

 

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Lent 16

Lent 16

(village life)

 

In enclaves

In clusters

We persist

Small-town living yet with

All our senses

 

We hear the seasons overhead;

Molecules of air

Have time to light on us

There might be swans

Upon the river

Lights under the bandstand

That switch on at night

Having charged by day

Through solar panels

 

And we might sit

On chairs filigreed in style

Sipping coffee as we like it

In a café set along

A narrow street

Beside a water’s edge

Redolent of all scents

Mostly fair,

 

Where we might talk

Or simply stop

The moments

Silently using

All we are

 

We might have work to do

Outside

We will

This could be a day off

Or after chores

Or some time we manage

By our own

An hour we must have

Somewhere inside

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Jörg Peter from Pixabay

 

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Lent 15

Lent 15

 

It is a sight to see

A last cold day in winter

Green is trying

To work its way through

It only looks like moss and lichen

Now

In the south, it’s autumn passing

I think I’d have to be there

Really to get it

Such is my brevity of sight

Only used to sensing northern climes

 

I don’t live in a desert world, either

I’d be just as likely to romanticize

Though it must be hard

 

to live a metaphor

When it strikes the covered face,

Threatening to upend

A breathing life

 

The world is extraordinary

Our world

It’s hard, it’s soft

It gives, it takes away

It inaugurates

It keeps away for good

A mean game

Except that it’s not meant

 

What we shall have here

What gained, what lost

Anything ponderous

Or discrete

Anything at all

 

C L Couch

 

 

gert jan degroot / 66 Images

Pxhere

 

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Lent 14

Lent 14

 

It’s hard not to feel invincible

When we feel invincible

Let’s not blame youth

Those of us in any age

Might forget ourselves

Relying on our defenses

(don’t even think about them)

 

We conquer the world

Forgetting those to either side

Who want more of the same

Or want to live more simply

Not as victims

Not as Alexander, either,

Or Zenobia

 

Live and let live

We might say

But should wonder how there’s such a choice

When no one is a planet

 

C L Couch

 

 

PlanetUser – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45377129

An artist’s rendition of Planet X.

 

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Lent 13

Lent 13

 

We kill them

in New Zealand.

We kill them

in Pittsburgh.

We kill them when we leave

disasters go unplanned.

What is wrong with us

that we must in living

(dying)

ways deny the worth

of each of us

in every moment?

 

There is an answer:

maybe it starts small

within a verdant nucleus

and then another.

And then we make something like

synapse so that

the network of humanity

cannot function in any other way

but connected.

 

C L Couch

 

 

New Zealand Mosque Massacre Live-Streamed

“Let’s get this party started.” Those were the chilling opening lines of a now-viral Facebook live video streamed by the gunman who casually and methodically killed at least 41 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand Friday. Eight more people died in an attack at another mosque, but it’s unclear if the same gunman was responsible.

 

Split Apple Rock in Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand

Split_Apple_Rock_Abel_Tasman_National_Park_New_Zealand.jpg: Alexander Klinkderivative work: —kallerna™ – Split_Apple_Rock_Abel_Tasman_National_Park_New_Zealand.jpg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6428938

 

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Lent 12

Lent 12

 

The disciples number

A baker’s dozen with Matthias,

An added treat

According to the lot

The dark or the light mark

That selected him

 

But in our story,

There are Marys

To teach us about calling

And a cause

 

The mother of Jesus

The Magdalene who first told of

The second life of Jesus

And was not believed

Mary the mother of disciples

These three count for much

And more

 

Yet often go uncounted

If not in symbol

Then in leadership

 

Who is the disciple

Who is my neighbor

Who shall rule among us

More lots

 

Or let God do the casting

If we notice, we might see

It’s done

Call Mary to be mother

Call Mary to be mother and to keep

Things in her heart

Until a time

 

Call Mary to be testifier

To correct the doubting

And give hope to those who are

Falling, collapsing from inside

 

Terrified, isolated, waiting

For nothing good

To happen anymore

 

Marys offer differing words

Of discipline, inner strength, and

Capability

No other

When other men have run away

 

C L Couch

 

 

File:The Three Marys at the Tomb LACMA

Domenico Piola (Italy, Genoa, 1627-1703)

Italy, 17th-18th century Drawings Brown ink and wash Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Blanke (M.72.124.2) Prints and Drawings

 

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Lent 11

Lent 11

 

It’s easy to feel pent up,

If not overwhelmed

 

Our world tells us to keep moving

And that’s fine

 

But if the wisdom-writer’s right,

Then there is a time for all things

 

In that, a time to let all

Movement happen all around

 

While we savor what there is

Or step out

 

Because it’s also time for

Taking up what is close by

 

Just behind the shoulder

And it goes unnoticed, even when

 

It presses from wherever

Time to look again

 

To hear

To touch

 

To taste

To smell

 

To pick up and take in

Like a newfound work of art

 

That otherwise might have only lived in dust,

Which is not living at all,

 

Lost to light

But now

 

Like this (dusted off),

We can

 

Enter into

A tasking of illumination

 

C L Couch

 

 

Adamantios – Own work

Attic (aka garret, loft or sky parlor) in Berlin, Germany.

(symbolism unplanned—synchronicitous?)

 

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Lent 10

Lent 10

 

2

 

First, though,

We must have him

In the wilderness

Forty days because forty’s

Important

 

In a place for unbelievers

(for heathens dwell upon a heath)

 

Nowhere to rest well

To drink, to bathe

To have the food that comes

From green and ready plants and trees

 

He is there, and

The wild

Must consume him

Yet he is so vast inside

He has room for it and so much more

 

The space of all the world

And the needs for which it

Cries

 

He is not alone

One other must be there

An adversary

Who must tempt the man

And the child untested

In the world

 

Make bread out of rock

Throw your tired body headlong

Into nihilism

Worship me so I can give you

Empire

Of the strong, such as

Alexander took

 

We know how it ends

Jesus cites

Adjures the tempter and

His own need

The thing must depart

The entity, the plan

(wile away another)

Angels visit angels

This act is done

There is no more to say

Or learn

Time to visit other withered places

 

C L Couch

 

 

Hotchkiss, Jedediah, 1828-1899 – https://www.civilwar.org/learn/maps/sketch-battle-wilderness-position-2nd-corps-anv-thursday-may-5th, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63245863

 

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Lent 9

Lent 9

 

1

 

We place Christ in a journey:

Celebrate his birth at Christmas

His presentation at the

Temple plus his

Baptism by his cousin John

Upon a bank of the Jordan River,

Then consider now

The earthly ministry

Ending in Jerusalem,

The next part of the calendar

 

What notes the work just now but

Miracles and teaching

And many encounters, one by one—

A woman by a well

A man who climbs a tree

Bemused to see this person

 

A woman who breaks

A vial of perfume to wash

His feet

A leper out of ten lepers

Who must return

With thanks

 

There is teaching

Answering the quandary, Who

Is my neighbor

A question about government

The discipline of a warrior

Who, though not a Jew, respects

The way of Christ as he would accept a

Commander’s prerogative

 

The woman who begs for scraps

Of mercy, who is rebuked

Before she astonishes him

With a reminder for whom he’s come

 

He comes for the Jews

He comes for Arabs and

For Romans

Even the pirates of

Parthia

He comes for the savage Britons

And the unknown Asians

He comes for them

He comes for then

He comes for now

He comes for you and me

 

Oh, how he loves you and me

And it never stops,

The arrival since creation

Life upon a troubled plain

The departure into earth

The return in keeping with

Prophecy and promise

 

C L Couch

 

 

Fritz Geller-Grimm – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1690920

Fritz Geller-Grimm – Own work

Saint James’s shell at a well of the Way, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

(Camino de Santiago)

 

“Oh, How He Loves You and Me” by Kurt Kaiser

 

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